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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Ghost Story is a strange bird. I don't hate it, but I don't love it....but I don't like it either. Maybe the correct word is...I am acquainted with it. No, no that sounds mean. Perhaps what I mean to say is that I enjoyed its company, but I'm not sure if I will be inviting it back within the next year. Still though, terrific dead person effects Ghost Story, hear hear!

If you don't know anything about Ghost Story, I think it best to begin with The Chowder Society. The Chowder Society happens to be exactly like The Midnight Society in Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Only it just contains old men that wear fancy suits, who drink brandy and tell stories in front of cozy fires in the fireplace.

Also, Fred Astaire is there except he's really old.

Membership and club meetings proceed the same however--spooky stories are told! So anyways, The Chowder Society holds a deep dark secret and this deep dark secret involves a ghost that is taking its revenge. When Chowder Society member Edward's son dies a mysterious death, the men soon realize that their past may not be as deeply buried as they thought. It's up to Edward's OTHER son to convince them that its time to fess up. But will they fess up too late?

I think Ghost Story has the misfortune of not being spooky enough. When I think of the term "ghost story" I think spooky. Here though, the spookiness is spaced much too far apart. Plus, the spookiness doesn't seem to be taken as far as it should go. That isn't to say however that there aren't thrills. In fact, the thrills seem to outweigh the spookiness as far as I'm concerned. What's the difference you ask? A thrill to me is more like a jump. While spookiness is something that worms its way slowly in and sticks around like the faint smell of burning leaves. Beautiful I know. In any case, Ghost Story is oddly fond of its thrills.

These thrills come in the form of a nasty, drowned, pruney skinned face woman--and boy is she hideous.

The first time it happens you get angry for being tricked. The second time it happens you laugh and pretend that you saw it coming. The third time? The fourth time? You've smash your hand into the wall and scream FOILED AGAIN! It's very surprising and almost seems to be a little advanced for the kind of tone that is displayed in this. Maybe I'm just being old man racist there, but I kind of felt like Ghost Story would be the kind of movie to take its time you know?

There also happens to be a lot of weird confusion happening. Certain scenes develop that don't feel like they are being properly introduced. A good example is the death of Edward's son in the beginning. I wish that had been set up better because the whole time I was confused and bothered. Who is this man? Why is he asking a random naked woman who she is? How did this random naked woman get in his bed? Why is the tub overflowing? It was all very strange. Of course looking back now, it does all make sense and perhaps that was indeed the point and all. Still though, there had to have been a better way to set that up, no? Wait a minute....what am I complaining about? That scene ended in the best way possible: naked free fall!

I tell you, I did not expect to see the penis but there it was.

I do admit to liking the camaraderie between the old men, and the flashback sequence gratifying their youth was pretty enlightening.

Which brings me to another point. Those flashbacks! I understand their necessity what with the whole principle of the ghost and why she is seeking revenge being so important. But for some reason, these flashbacks seemed to have been able to exist as movies on their own! I wonder how the movie would have been had the flashbacks been dispersed in a somewhat even way? As it stands, the film feels very "scheduled". Like there's all these specific time blocks, "this is where the flashback happens" and so on and so on, and because of this, the film feels stunted.

Ghost Story is also one of those movies where the clues to why the ghost is getting revenge are very hidden. It's almost as if we could never have possibly guessed what the situation was until we see the final (and very long) flashback. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it still leaves me feeling like something unfair was committed against me. Could it be perhaps that the story in Ghost Story is not dealt out evenly enough? There was too much back and forth. The son's flashback, the Chowder Society's flashback and then all of the random things in between.

Hmmph. I know it seems like I didn't like this very much but I did at least enjoy most of it.

It kept my attention, which in this day and age is deserving of 5 stars all on its own. I guess I just expected more ghosting. More ghosting and less things that don't make any sense at all. Like the side plot of that crazy goon guy and his weird, childlike friend that wears high heels and is dirty.

By the way, did I miss something there?

Sure, Ghost Story has its moments, and the final reveal of why Eva died in the first place is pretty traumatizing but what about the spooks? Overall Eva just felt too much like a real person throughout. In fact, I wasn't even convinced that she WAS a ghost. I came extremely close to deducing that Eva had somehow survived the accident, found a witch doctor and/or drank from the fountain of youth and now lived perpetually in life as a hot 20 something woman. It totally makes sense.

Except for the fact that she is dead.

Anywho, Ghost Story has its charms but I guess it just didn't charm me....

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Please note that aside from the title screens and the picture of Anton LaVey, I will not be posting screenshots from this. Instead, I googled "Morbid Curiosity" and posted those pictures instead.

After quietly watching and in some cases skimming the content in Death Scenes 1 and 2, I can state with full confidence that I am probably, most definitely NOT a sociopath. This is good news considering I at one point cut a part of my dog's ear off with sewing scissors when I was little (In my defense I was playing "Vet"....). But now, I'm glad to report that I do have feelings and that I do not take pride in watching actual, real footage of death.

When I saw on Netflix that the most watched Instant streaming movies were Death Scenes: The Manson Clan and Death Scenes 2, I became simultaneously interested and disgusted. What does it say about us as a culture, who have a vast amount of movies to watch at their disposal yet choose to watch videos and photographs of people's dead bodies? Naturally as someone on the path to discovering what it is about disturbing films that forces people to watch them, I couldn't pass up the chance to see or experience these death scenes.

Narrated by Anton LaVey, both Death Scenes are extremely difficult to watch. I felt physically bothered by it all and couldn't stop worrying that somewhere, some 12 year old teenage boys were laughing and replaying these horrific images over and over again. We really see it all here. We see war photos, we see Marilyn Monroe on the slab, we see the Manson Clan's dirty work---we see dead children, people's heads blown off, people jumping out of buildings and seemingly bouncing off the sidewalk. These are videos not for the faint of heart and yet they continue to stay on Netflix's most watched list.

Part of it I'm sure, is our curiosity. How many of us can say that while passing by a highway accident, we didn't crane our necks to get a glimpse of the carnage? It's almost as if we as humans have this inability to look away from things that are horrible and morbid. But why? I almost feel like because most of us have never experienced that kind of death up close and personal, that we don't understand or take it in the way that we should.

Death Scenes seems to me to be exactly what non-horror fans think horror fans like--and that upsets me. The difference between real life and horror films is that horror films ARE films. They aren't real. We aren't taking pleasure in the fact that these could in fact be real people. We know they aren't. Death Scenes however is an entirely different ball game. But you know what the saddest part about it is? Because I watch so many horror films, so many of the images I was faced with in these documentaries looked fake to me. It just didn't seem possible that I was watching real people die on film. Only when I started reminding myself that this was in fact real, was when I started feeling sick.

I made it through barely 10 minutes of Death Scenes before I had to start fast forwarding. It at times simply felt like too much. The scenes of death are overlapped with this cheery music, Anton LaVey narrates a few of the scenes like some kind of twisted game show host. The clip of Vic Morrow getting killed on the set of The Twilight Zone movie was replayed over about 25 times, each time getting more and more zoomed in until you can just make out bodies getting crushed beneath the helicopter. This is what kind of freaks me out about Death Scenes. Why do we need to see that replayed until we actually DO see something? Hopefully I'm not alone in feeling comforted by the fact that the fuzzy video of it does not warrant an actual good glimpse at what happens?

I'm not going to discourage people from watching either of these "documentaries". I use the quotes there because I'm not sure if that's what this is classified under or not. Aside from a few spots of commentary, there is no talking and picture are videos are merely playing. I will say in Death Scenes 2 that there is a rather interesting video tutorial on how an autopsy is done. This I feel better about because it is somewhat enlightening and makes you feel less bad about yourself. Overall though, Death Scenes puts a bad taste in my mouth. It makes me question its necessity and the kind of people that flock to watch it. Not that I can judge anyone, since I did also watch it. Hmmm maybe most of those people were like me---morbidly interested or curious about why these videos exist?

Maybe it's telling after all, that while we crane our necks to get a look at the aftermath of a car accident and if by chance we do see something---we immediately lose the desire to see it ever again. Such is Death Scenes. Watch it. Skim through it and hopefully you like me will erase it off your queue and never have to look at it again.

Friday, May 27, 2011

It's hard to stay away from The Twilight Zone for too long, especially when there are 5 booming seasons of awesome episodes that you need to see before you die. Not that I'm going to die anytime soon but hey, one of these days a crazy religious person will be right about the end of the world. While most people's bucket lists contain meaningful things like "Cure cancer" or "Go skydiving in the buff", mine contains mostly "Watch a lot of good TV shows that you missed" and also, "Kiss my cat a lot". So that means of course that I have a lot of catching up to do in the TV world and The Twilight Zone is a big part of this.

The After Hours

After my review of Tourist Trap, there was no way that I could do a 2nd volume of Twilight Zone snapshots and not include this one. I have to say that while I liked all the episodes I watched last time, none of them really spoke to me the way that I was hoping. The After Hours however kept on speaking to me. I think it was saying, "Marsha! Marsha! Marsha!" not to be confused with

The episodes follows Marsha a young woman shopping in a department store with the desire to buy her mother a gold thimble. After a strange elevator opens and takes her to a ninth floor that is mysteriously barren, Marsha meets a saleswoman who happens to have one gold thimble in stock. Things get weird fast and after Marsha pays for the thimble, gets creeped out and runs back into the elevator, she notices that the thimble is scratched and in poor condition. What a gyp! She tries to complain to management only to find that there is no ninth floor. That is when Marsha sees the mysterious saleswoman and realizes that she is actually a mannequin. Dun dun dun!

God, I love it. There so much to love about this episode that I'm finding it hard to keep it all contained. I just cannot get over how much I love the idea of this strange alternate realm where mannequins are real people. It plays into my irrational fear about the "after hours" lives of mannequins but it also doesn't necessarily make them terrifying. It's kind of like when we realize that Scary German Guy from The Monster Squad actually has a huge heart. The After Hours restores a similar sort of kindness in mannequins I think, and I appreciate that.

That isn't to say of course that the mannequins don't still have their scary moments. There's one moment in particular, when Marsha is freaking out and noticing all the mannequins around her when one of the mannequins hands moves. It's such a great moment of concentrated fear. It's like I was hoping for that to happen but not entirely convinced that The Twilight Zone could do it. And then everything hit its peak when Marsha goes back to the ninth floor with the saleswoman and we see an entire room of mannequins. This scene is spectacular and the way that each mannequin slowly comes to life is AWESOME.

I have no other word for you. I love this episode a lot and the ending is the cherry on top of that love. When the store manager looks in the camera at the end

..........yup, that was when I decided who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Right then and there.

The Hitch-Hiker

Reader Carol suggested the episode The Hitch-Hiker for its curious way of always freaking her out. After reading the brief plot outline I was hooked. A young woman driving across country continuously sees the same strange hitchhiker along every leg of her journey. Ack! I once told a story about hitchhikers, during my review of The Hitcher that you should probably read.

Alright again, I really only like that story because I love imagining myself alone and sad eating birthday cake in my friend's kitchen with her cat. But anyways, there is for some reason nothing creepier than driving alone late at night and seeing a person hitchhiking on the road. This episode is the epitome of that feeling. My only disappoint lays in the fact that I guessed the ending the minute the episode started. I blame this on the fact that I've seen one too many horror movies that deal with this same type of plot. See Dead End, Jacob's Ladder and Triangle for more information.

Despite that however, seeing that hitchhiker crop up all the time is quite unnerving isn't it? Nothing is more chilling though than the phone call she makes to her home at the end of the episode. Even though I knew the "twist", it was still a very creepy moment. I enjoyed seeing the shift in Nan and witnessing her acceptance but I still felt all sad and whiny about things. Plus, I can't imagine anything worse than driving across the country alone without turning on the radio. What were you thinking Nan?!

Eye of the Beholder was recommended to me by one of my very favorite people, Christine Hadden. This episode wins my praise by doing several wonderful things. For starters, the plot seems very simple. A woman whose face is completely covered in bandages is trying to have her horribly disfigured face repaired. But are things as simple as they seem? Don't forget this IS the Twilight Zone after all. The episode is not only strangely intriguing in the subtlest of ways, but it also employs some great acting and some even greater camera work.

It is a true test of one's acting ability to completely portray a believable and well fleshed out character with just your voice. Here it is done however and it's done brilliantly. There's so much suspense built up to the moment where the bandages are removed and that scene is soooooo tedious and mind boggling. My favorite thing however, other than the reveal at the end, is the crafty way that the doctors' and nurses' faces are hidden.

I admit I again guessed the ending mere seconds into the episode's start (I can't help it if I'm like totally wicked smart) but it didn't prevent me from feeling completely engrossed. It's such a neat concept and so simple and it all works beautifully together. I can imagine myself watching this as a young one and flipping a giant shit when the bandages came off. Something tells me that my fears would be very different had that happened.

When I was in middle school, I used to think that the number 22 was following me. No matter what I was doing, the number 22 seemed to be plastered over every thing. It's not surprising then to see a Twilight Zone episode entitled Twenty-Two that seems to rely at least somewhat on this same kind of craziness. Twenty-Two was recommended to me by a number of people and one those people is Mikey Sarago, who pointed out that he hadn't seen it in years but he remembers it being especially creepy. I'm not exactly a person who passes up good old fashioned creepiness, so what was I waiting for?

In the episode, an overworked and stressed out stripper named Liz Powell, has a reoccurring nightmare while recovering in the hospital. In the nightmare, Liz always ends up in the basement of hospital, outside of room number 22--the morgue. Here, a sinister looking nurse opens the doors and says, "Room for one more honey", prompting Liz to scream and run back to her room where she soon awakens. It is later discovered that the hospital nurse who does work in the morgue does not resemble the one from Liz's dream. The doctor does find however that despite the fact that Liz has never been to the morgue, she is able to recount details flawlessly--like the room number which is indeed 22.

The ending of the episode is entirely awesome and try as I might I couldn't figure it out until a few minutes before it happened. I guess my smartness is slipping. Leading up to that moment however, Liz's nightmare IS fantastically creepy. I've been meaning to bring this up but another one of my favorite things about The Twilight Zone is how effortlessly it seems to make every episode feel like a nightmare. Here however, an actual nightmare is the focal point of the episode and true to form--the nightmare feels like a valid part of the atmosphere and the character's surroundings. Not much has changed in the hospital when Liz goes down to the basement but it's still a nightmare. I guess I just love how The Twilight Zone creates these great feelings of uneasiness and that uneasiness is at its peak here.

I also gives props to Twenty-Two for not being too predictable. I assumed this episode would be similar to The Hitch-Hiker but it's not, and also for a change, the ending isn't necessarily sad either. Not that I'd be terribly sad if something happened to Liz Powell though....she WAS pretty fricking annoying.

I love when these episodes end with good and simple morals. In this case--do NOT under any circumstances, drink and drive. Or wait a minute... is the moral do not let your wife drive because women are bad drivers and will almost certainly always get you stuck inside a fake town? Hmmm, yes I think that's it.

Here we have a couple who after leaving a party, wake up to find themselves in a strange house. There is fake food, fake cabinets and a fake telephone. To top it all off, the giggle of a small child can be heard from...somewhere. Further exploration of the town yields similarly frustrating results. Fake squirrels, fake trees and policemen and even fake grass---this town is whack!

It doesn't take a total genius to figure out where this one is headed but it's still the feeling of hopelessness and claustrophobia that wins my vote. There's also that horrible feeling of pity that we feel for the couple. Towards the end they get on a train and believe their problems to be over. They make jokes about what will happen when they go back to work and we as onlookers have a feeling that things will only get worse for them. We're right of course as we soon find that the train has gone in a circle and they are back where they started in fake land.

It's a fun little episode that reminds me of an Are You Afraid of the Dark episode and even of Fantastic Planet. And even though it's a little obvious what's going on, I suppose you still feel quite badly for the couple. Oh well, at least they're in nice outfits.

Got any favorite episodes that I haven't talked about yet? Tell me about them in the comments section!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Well, the rumors are true. Netflix and I have made up. I know some of you think less of me for going back to a movie supplier that continues to disappoint me, but the good outweighs the bad right? Tourist Trap arrived safe and sound today and I was eager to finally cozy up to it. And then....something funny happened. I suddenly realized that Tourist Trap was possibly a little too creepy for comfort. Creepy is good yes, but in some cases, like when you watch The Exorcist at age seven while hiding behind a couch at your older sister's sleepover, the creepy is too much to handle and before you know it you're staying up until 5 in the morning because you think that a moth flew into your eyeball and is going to possesses you. Not that I speak from experience or anything like that....

Here's the thing about mannequins and me. I don't like them. I used to have these evil nightmares/evil fantasies about the mannequins in malls coming to life and eating me. (And no I'm not talking about the movie, Mannequin. I saw that after I had these fantasies which means that somebody no names mentioned (GOD) was trying to tell me something.) I was positive that there was a demon in there somewhere. PLUS no matter where you stand in said mall, the mannequin is always looking at you and that is not okay. I also once had a dream where I was smushed into a weird magic carpet ride thing in a car wash and this mannequin was teaching things at a blackboard. She smelled of musk.

Suffice to say---mannequins creep me out. Which is too bad because Tourist Trap is all about the mannequins. And let me tell you, they are fucking creepy. I'm still struggling though with figuring out whether these mannequins are creepy for everyone or just for people like me that have a particular aversion to them. Let's discuss.

The film follows a group of friends who after mysterious car trouble, end up at Mr. Slausen's "museum" which is really just a bunch of mannequins and racist Indian artifacts. The mannequins there seem kind of funny. They seem real and sometimes talk. Also a strange man wearing weird mannequin masks

(Didn't know that was a real thing) has telekinesis and kills people by turning them into mannequins. Did I mention there are mannequins everywhere?

Hopefully, most people will find at least some of the mannequin scenes off putting. I did chuckle though when one of the characters commented on how realistic the mannequins looked. Newsflash: they look like really shitty mannequins. But anyways, the really great thing about the mannequins is that sometimes they do this weird singing, laughing thing and it's one of the creepiest and oddly unique things I've ever seen. They also drop their jaws at various points and do this horrid scream.

Sure, most of my fear and terror brought me back to past nightmares and bad mannequin experiences but that scene where all the mannequins are laughing, singing and falling??? I know I can't be the only one to pee my pants a little.

One especially refreshing thing to see in this is that it doesn't follow the typical Slasher model of people being picked off one by one. We may THINK that's what happening and then two of the characters are simply alive and chained in the basement. They also escape at one point and come extremely close to getting away for good. I admit, I had fleeting thoughts of a safe and sound escape, but of course like most of my fleeting thoughts (inappropriate or not) they fizzled almost as soon as they began.

The scene that I would like to share with you however contains one of the most brilliant usages of the feeling of suffocation and terror. Some random girl is chained to a table in the basement and our killer begins spreading plaster over her face. I use the term "plaster" loosely here as the plaster is obviously pizza dough.

While the killer is doing this however, he begins explaining in a step by step process what the girl is going through, how she is feeling and how she will die. It was surprisingly well done and it definitely freaked me out. I once saw a Rescue 911 where a girl put plaster on her chest without putting oil or whatever on first and soon it began tightening around her and she almost died. Ever since then, I've stayed far, far away from plaster.

Seriously though, this scene? A+ It uses zero gore, zero suspense really, and yet it still got to me. Seeing the girl heave helplessly on the table with her face covered in plaster is something I will not be forgetting easily.

Of course, Tourist Trap isn't all sandwiches in the sun. Everyone dies except our final girl when there are still 30 minutes left. This made for 30 long minutes of chases, crying and pulling your hair out and screaming like this.

I didn't mind it so much as I found Molly to be a semi-likeable final girl--although I admit I liked Becky a little bit more. There's also a lot of fuzziness going on. The whole telekinesis thing is kind of just there without any real explanation or attention. You can see the identity of the killer coming from a mile away and once he's out and about, he suddenly gets really annoying. Plus he can be in two places at once all the fucking time. Not fair. These are of course minor limitations. A movie like Tourist Trap shouldn't really be dissected so easily. The real power of the film lies in its ability to create some honest to goodness fear in its viewers. There's just something so nightmarish about being trapped in a house full of mannequins and Tourist Trap exploits the shit out of that.

Overall Tourist Trap got to me. There were too many mannequins for me to really feel comfortable about myself and my surroundings. I'm probably going to have mannequin dreams tonight and it's going to be horrible. But isn't that what we long for in a great horror film? So maybe you won't all have mannequin nightmares after seeing this, but I bet that most of you will never be able to look at a mannequin the same ever again and that makes all the difference.

Also, you should know that I have a lot of hopes and dreams for myself. At the very, very top of that list however is the simple dream to drive down the coast with my mannequin friends in the backseat. We'll smell the sea breeze and we'll laugh. And life will be good.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Splice is weird. Not in a cool Santa Sangre, armless circus performer way though... more like in a I feel weird in my pants kind of way. Alright, so I KNEW what was going to happen with Dren and Adrian Brody but I don't think I was mentally prepared to handle that and that little scene at the end there on a Monday afternoon. Thursday afternoon maybe but this, this is just not Monday material.

I had the opportunity to see Splice in Boston with Vincenzo Natali in attendance, but I missed out on it because no one would go with me. This was before I got all brave and decided to venture out to movies alone. So now more than a year later, I am finally watching the film that divided so many people. There were strong camps of "worst film of the year" and strong camps of "best film of the year" and smaller camps of "ehhh it was okay". So what did I think about it? I don't know I still feel really weird about everything.

The thing about Vincenzo Natali is that he is very smart and it's kind of threatening--or at least it is to me as someone who still cannot figure out a 20% tip in their head. We saw it in Cube in a rather startling and mind numbingly brilliant way and we see it again in Splice only this time with science. Here we have two scientists and lovers who have revolutionized gene splicing by creating entirely new animals from several different ones.

When they wish to take their experiments one step further and introduce human DNA into the mix, they find that cannot due to that whole little thing about one step at a time and blah blah we can't let science get out of hand, crap. So unbeknownst to the big guys upstairs, Clive and Elsa proceed with their experiment and soon create Dren. As assumed, the "experiment" does grow out of control and Dren's genetic makeup starts making things very complicated for everyone.

When I saw the preview for Splice, the audience laughed. I imagine, or I hope rather, that the same happened throughout the actual movie. For some reason, I still fail to see where all those fits of laughter comes from. Yes, I wanted to laugh too but why? Was the film purposely made to be funny? It didn't feel like it was, and that always trips me up. Is it the writing? The acting? The overwhelming absurdity of it all? I guess.

One thing's for sure, Splice is creative and original. I don't think anyone, even the ones that did not like Splice could ignore that fact. While I think that I can safely say that I did like the film, I did have kind of an issue with Sarah Polley. Did anyone else feel like she was not a very good actress in this? A lot of her lines felt very forced and awkward. Maybe it's the character but, Elsa's mothering skills were really embarrassing to me.

Maybe I was just altogether embarrassed at the fact that Dren was a person and not an experiment. Or MAYBE I just thought her dresses were a little too short okay?

Let's talk about Dren for a moment. Dren is creepy. Hands down. So maybe you think she's a little pretty or hot but then if you're normal you'll hopefully notice that whoa she has 4 fingers, or whoa her legs are fucked up or whoa she has a pointy tongue

and then you'll immediately stop thinking those thoughts. Please take note that, "being normal" evidently does not apply to Adrian Brody.

While we're on the subject though, don't you think that Dren should come out with her own instructional videos? I think she could make a killing. Just imagine the possibilities.

Drawing with Dren

Dancing with Dren

Makeup with Dren

Kitty snuggle time with Dren

Naughty time with Dren

She has talent, why not exploit it?

Oh right because she eats wild animals and is bald. Oh well.

On the serious side of things, the thing I like most about Splice is how it really isn't about Dren at all. Overall the movie seems to be more about Elsa and her foggy past and her even foggier motivations. The revelations made later in the film were surprising to me and it really made me think about everything in a much different way. It made me question the need for Dren's existence and the relationship between Elsa and her mother and how it is similar or different to her and Dren's relationship. There's also a thrilling theme going on here involving the word control. On the scientific side of things, control is a huge thing and necessary to carry out experiments. On the personal side of things, Elsa needed control over Dren and that is why she carried out the procedure in the first place. You could also say actually that Elsa possesses a strange control over Clive as well. Someday when I'm feeling more smart and up to the challenge, I think I will delve deeper into this theme and its importance....yes one day.....

Elsa is a strange character. Some even say she is the true villain in Splice and I can't exactly say that I disagree. Well maybe that's just because I didn't like Sarah Polley, but then again there is that abrupt turn in the film where Elsa goes from kind and nurturing to eeek you're kind of crazy. A few of the people on the IMDB boards believe Splice is largely misogynistic because all the women in the film tempt the men into making bad decisions. And to those people I ask, what about the men? They aren't exactly shown in the brightest light either, being portrayed as sex crazed men who seem to want nothing more than sex and rape. What about them hmmm? Maybe, and this is just a thought, but maybe Splice is just a film. Stop turning everything into a man vs woman battle alright?

Overall, I think I like Splice. There are a few things I'm not 100% sold on but mostly I feel at least a little smarter and cultured having seen it. I totally dig how Natali has that power to make us feel completely enclosed in our main character's environment. In Cube it was obviously inside the Cube but in Splice, it's a little less obvious. Elsa and Clive are so absorbed in their scientific lives that we rarely get a chance to see or experience the outside world. We are constricted, just as they are to science and to Dren. Fascinating stuff I say.

Oh and by the way, congratulations on splicing various animal DNA to make two giant penises, Clive and Elsa.